Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Pretreatment of woody biomass for biofuel production: energy efficiency, technologies, and recalcitrance

Formally Refereed

Abstract

This mini review discusses several key technical issues associated with cellulosic ethanol production from woody biomass: energy consumption for woody biomass pretreatment, pretreatment energy efficiency, woody biomass pretreatment technologies, and quantification of woody biomass recalcitrance. Both total sugar yield and pretreatment energy efficiency, defined as the total sugar recovery divided by total energy consumption for pretreatment, should be used to evaluate the performance of a pretreatment process. A post-chemical pretreatment wood size-reduction approach was proposed to significantly reduce energy consumption. The review also emphasizes using a low liquid-to-wood ratio (L/W) to reduce thermal energy consumption for any thermochemical/physical pretreatment in addition to reducing pretreatment temperature.

Keywords

recalcitrance, cellulosic ethanol, woody/forest biomass, SPORL, enzymatic hydrolysis/saccharification, pretreatment

Citation

Zhu, J.Y.; Pan, Xuejun; Zalesny, Ronald S. Jr. 2010. Pretreatment of woody biomass for biofuel production: energy efficiency, technologies, and recalcitrance. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. 87: 847-857.
Citations
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/36441